Mi Contra Fa

Lap harp chair

So: gravity.

When I sit to play my small Ardival Kilcoy harp, I usually sit it in my lap. It's that small.  But because I am rather short, and chairs are rather tall, my thighs always slope toward the ground.  This results in the harp always slowly edging its way closer and closer to my knees, until I have to interrupt what I'm doing to haul it back up.  Not great in the middle of a piece.

I have tried footstools, and they help - but usually too far in the other direction for comfort.  If I can wrangle a bench to perform on, I can also put the harp on it, between my legs as I straddle the bench.  Then it and I are on the same plane, and stay in the same place.  But I have wanted a chair I could perform in, without stacking books and magazines under my feet, as if I were a wobbly table.

Behold: MAMMUT!

IKEA's MAMMUT children's chair seems, at first blush, to be almost perfect (comical shape aside).  The seat is just under 12" from the ground, 6" lower than most chairs.  That's a tidge too low for me, so I lean back a little as the harp creeps higher in my lap - but the chair has a back, so that's okay!  My main worry is that I am something like 4-5 times heavier than a small child, and I cannot find a weight rating for MAMMUT.  One day, the harp and I may go sprawling.  But for $15, I'm willing to throw a drape over it and give it a shot.

I have had a 12" porter's stool for a while:

It's the same height as MAMMUT, and looks much more SCA-appropriate (even if I can't say that the design is historical), but it doesn't have that back.  I've taken it to events as a seat, and I can use it to play my larger 25-string harp (harp on ground, me on stool), but my abs can't quite handle it with the lap harp.

X-frame stools are period for me.  Maybe one day I'll determine my ideal sitting height and follow these DIY instructions to make one.  (There are wooden camp stools for sale, but at 18", it's back to being too high.)  This stool is rather fancy; I have somewhere a source for an archaeological find of a folding Roman camp stool of wrought iron and leather... but it may still be too tall at just over 16" high, and 21 lbs is definitely not in-line with my current desire to travel light.

Beowulf Birthday Bash

First, before I forget - one of the reasons "Veni" was giving me such a headache was that I had it in the wrong mode. It's Mixolydian, not Lydian.  Now that I'm starting on the right note, it works great.

I've had the week from Introvert Hell (four 10-11 hour days of business conference) so I was not as well-practiced, well-rested or even coherent as I might have been.  But!  I had a lovely time.

Got to sit with the Bright Hills Bards, who are always awesome. 

Entered a bunch of old stuff into the Northern European A&S display.

Showed a few interested folks the lyre; Mistress Molly very generously gifted me with veil pins for the demonstration.

The Anglo-Saxon poetry class had four! students, who followed right along and said I was making sense.  We didn't do a writing exercise, at least partly because I forgot to bring paper and pens for it. D'oh.  So (since at least 3/4 were performers) we talked performance modes instead.

Also in good scop fashion, after I performed "Beocat," I was asked to do it again for the kitchen folks.  Kitchen folks approved and offered me a small measure of mead. Yum!

Got to geek out a bit about my garb with Aaradyn.  Possibly a bit too much...  ("Why did you pick purple and red?"  "Oh! Blah blah Arnegunde blah blah round pins blah pin suite blah blah")  Pleased to report that the chained pin suite/belt combo works very well to  hold the coat/robe in place in lieu of the round pins.

Ooh, also on the costuming front: Since it was chilly, I wore the wool veil I made originally to go with this ensemble.  As it is a bit heavy, I put on my gold-threaded headband (just for bling), then over it put a linen cap from Revival Clothing.  I pinned the heavy veil right to the cap instead of to the headband.  Worked like a charm!  (Got the idea from this book, I think. Or possibly this one.)

I went outside to say hello to Aaradyn and Baron William, and Aaradyn introduced me to her Highness, who was lovely.  We spoke for a bit about poetry and music, and Baron William said some very nice things (apparently I wrote a poem about armoring? And he's kept it?  Very sweet!)

Finally: the performance!  It was not error-free, unsurprisingly, but I think it went very well.  I was not pleased with myself for being on-book, and my eye contact for those pieces was sketchy at best, but life's life.  Despite all my good intentions, practice has just not been happening - although I wonder if it may, soon.  It feels sort of like my energies are swinging back into this.  Still, self-care first - work has picked up with a lot more responsibilities and I need to do things like get exercise and play with the kids.  All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.  One thing at a time.

"Veni" with harp

I added some really basic harp to this piece.  ('Really basic' accompaniment is still new for me.) 

Depending on how you look at it, the melody (adapted from Sequentia's version) is either plagal Lydian mode or a major key.  (It doesn't contain the fourth above tonic that would resolve which.)  On my Ardival Rosemarkie, tuned in C major, that means tonic is an F.

All I'm doing is, if I recall correctly, (bass, treble) CF cf, DF cf, CF cf, Cf cf.  One teeny change from C to D gives it just enough motion to not feel too flat.

At least, I think that's what I came up with last night. c is a fifth up from F, or a C a fourth below, which is why it works with an F tonic here.  I don't think I was playing Fc fc', because the highest c' on my Rosemarkie is plinky and not very nice.

Still don't have the Latin words memorized, and still get caught up on the final couplet. I originally wrote it as "briskly/quickly," then changed it to the approximate rhyme "swiftly/quickly," and actually sing it every which way (including sometimes 'quickly/quickly,' ergh).  Practice, practice, practice...

Practice

I always come back from Somerset all fired up to practice my instruments more.  But rather than career around willy-nilly and not necessarily get anywhere, I should have a Plan.  Why am I practicing? What do I want to do?

Harp

I need to do some work on my technique, both on wire and gut.  Finger exercises, ap Huw figures, drills for fourth finger strength especially.  Learning the shape of the instruments, being able to 'grab' octaves, fifths, other intervals without looking.  Playing cleanly and confidently.

Refreshing the old repertoire first sounds like a good place to start as far as songs go.

Lyre

Also technique.  Fourth finger strengthening, strumming, using a plectrum.  Agility, possibly ornamentation.

I need to stop talking about recitation and instrument and start doing it. Since I don't have much of a formal fixed repertoire for lyre, that sounds like a good exercise for it.  I should probably start with a carefully-considered, perhaps composed, accompaniment, until I have an idea of what works and what doesn't and can improvise more.

Desired Outcomes

More assured stage presence.  Clean and clear melodies, played with commitment and consistent rhythm (no pausing to hunt and peck for strings).  Accompaniment with a purpose - not wandering, aimless noodling that distracts and worries me (does this sound okay?).

Use recording technology to evaluate performance, get used to making/viewing videos of myself.  In time, I hope I'll be making video tutorials for YouTube, and I should be comfortable with that process before the first one goes up.

Do it.  I've spent so long not-performing, I'm building up anxiety about returning to the stage, and it undermines my stage presence. Practice what I want to perform, then go perform it somewhere confidently.

Confidence, confidence, confidence.  I see a theme here.

Somerset Harp Festival

I went, I saw, I had a good time.  Took a really nifty class on Middle Eastern rhythms, and got a refresher class from Cynthia Cathcart, my wire harp teacher (back when I was taking lessons, Before Children).  I learned a half-dozen ap Huw figures to practice, hurrah!

I'll be proposing some classes for next Somerset, I think.  While the classes are usually interesting, they're also generally geared for people playing 29-36 nylon strings.  Lots of classes on arpeggios and glissandos, on different figures for left-hand chords, on fingering and hand positions for nylon, on "using all your strings," and so on.  My primary instrument (if I can be said to have one, for all the practice I've had recently) is my 19-string wire.  Different technique, different positioning, different approach to arranging.  So much just isn't applicable to me. 

It is always fun to hear the different pro players, and how they excel in different ways.  Main takeaway lesson: Playing lovely, floating music on the harp is not hard.  Playing gripping music, music that demands and commands full attention from the audience, that's harder.  Whether it's rapid melody played absolutely clean and fast, with ringing ornaments that baffle the ear; a slow air with sensitive phrasing that just draws you up and up; a can-do accompaniment that gets out of the way of terrific vocals - it has to be more than just "nice" and "pretty."

Lessons learned

I worry more about a command performance than a competition.  If I mess up during a competition, the worst thing that happens is that I lose.  But when someone has requested me to play for an occasion, and I mess that up... it feels like giving a broken present.

I was requested to play my wire harp for my church's summer solstice service.  Normally, I do my improv as meditations, but the organizer wanted "Sheebeg, Sheemor."  Now, I know that; it's actually the only O'Carolan I know.  So I got out the harp for some crash practicing.

"Let's go simple," I thought.  "Melody with octave-grabbing on the strong notes."  Except I'd grab sevenths and ninths instead of octaves.  "Melody with moving drone!"  Better, but still not performance-ready.

Back when the Storvik Music Ensemble was running, we had a violinist.  He played well enough solo but had no group experience.  No problem, that's what ensemble was for.  So I'd give him easy parts - really easy.  Like, one note per measure.  And he seemed offended.  He could play more difficult stuff than that.

But not under pressure.

I eventually just played the melody, with one open fifth at the ending.  And it worked.  I think I missed two notes, but they weren't critical ones and I kept the rhythm going - you could legitimately call it a "variation," I think.  Certainly not ear-splittingly wrong.  I was happy with the performance, and I suspect I would not have been if I'd gone for something even a smidgen more technically challenging.

Gnomic Verses with Harp

A tech-enabled experiment!

Poem: A selection of the gnomic verses from the Exeter Book as found in "The Earliest English Poems," trans. Michael Alexander, Penguin Books 1991.

Music: A progression of open fifths: DAda (x4), CGcg (x4), repeat for one minute ending on DAda

Recording software: Audacity

Microphone: Initially, the mic on the webcam was picking up too much noise so I tried the directed mic-on-a-stick I have (a $10 cheapie).  Noise problem solved, audio quality fairly wretched.  On a different computer, I did once get a good recording off of this thing...

Recording Notes: Place mic near harp soundboard to record music.  Place mic near mouth to record words.

Mixing: I recorded the music and spoken word components separately, in different Audacity files.  Then I copy-pasted the spoken word track into the music project and "Saved As" a third project.  I had to balance the two tracks a bit, turning down the harp and turning up the words.

Technical Difficulties: Make sure Windows Vista Defender is NOT running before doing ANYTHING.

Result: Can be heard here (MP3, ~ 1 Mb). 

Conclusion: It's not exactly a show-stopper, but there's nothing wrong with the very simple progression as an underlay.  I stress again that they were recorded separately, with no attempt to align the words with the shifts in the music.  The recording itself is fairly crap, but it does let me hear roughly what I sound like without me having to play, recite and listen all at the same time.

Future Work: Try it with lyre. Also, memorize the selection of text.

Saxon Songs

Carol Wood has put out a new book called Saxon Songs, which is a compilation of information on Anglo-Saxons, their harps and their poetry.  She's got a PhD in Medieval Literature, apparently, and is also the person behind the Chaucer Songbook, which I have heard praised to the skies but never purchased (my interest in 14th cen music not being all that strong). 

While I am fairly sure I have read all or most of the primary sources for Anglo-Saxon harp information, I am still eager to see what another scholar has made of it.  The book also includes her settings for some of the poems, and again, I'd like to see what conclusions she's drawn and how they compare to what I do.

Pimp My Psaltery?

(Why don't I have an "Instruments" tag?)

I have a MusicMaker psaltery-toy.  You know, something like this, with a soundboard 1/4" thick and a soundhole that was cut with the biggest bit on the drill press. It was medievalish and not expensive, and my baby can bang and drool on it and I don't mind. But I don't actually play it often, and I've never taken it to an event.

Well, yesterday I picked it up, held it sideways in the crook of my arm, and played most of my medieval repertoire on it. One-handed, I wasn't getting any harmony notes in there (not on first try, anyway) but the melodies were just fine. (And I suspect that, since they were often plucked with plectrums, it was a melody instrument anyway. It'd be like two-fingered piano playing.)

And it occurred to me that this was much smaller, more durable, and more portable than even my tiny wire harp. Which, now that we're toting a ton of baby stuff to every event, is a consideration.

The main problem (if it's a problem) is the steel strings on the thing. The Internet is making assorted claims on what medieval psalteries would have been strung with - gut to start, almost certainly, and "eventually wire" but no one wants to date the advent of wire. (At any rate, I doubt I could fit gut strings through the holes on the wire mounts.) But I could do harp wire - I forget if it's brass or bronze, but I think brass - mostly so that it would be easier on my fingernails.

And if I destring it, why, I could decorate the soundboard!

Of course, all that work and decoration moves it away from being something the baby can gnaw on. Which could be something of a shame, because he also seems to like to pick out notes from time to time. Never mind finding the time to do it. Probably I'll leave it alone.